06/04/2022

The Policy Problem

The Policy Problem

The Policy Solution

The Policy Solution

  • 159 applications for support
  • 2 rejections
  • No information on which or why

The Data

The Data

The Challenges

  1. Are declines in local news supply by newspapers being offset by increases in news supply from digital and broadcast?
  2. How do you link a newspaper to a municipality?
  3. How do you treat marginal newspapers?

The Solutions

  1. Count only explicitly closures of newspapers (dailies and community e.g. weeklies)
  2. Find municipal election results for: mayoral margin of victory, turnout, and number of mayoral candidates back to 2001.
  3. Supplement with a database of municipal election results that cover roughly the same time period of Canada’s 100 largest cities (Breux, Couture, and Koop 2017).
  4. Track down missing gaps through provincial databases and contacting municipalities.

The Data

  • 116 unique municipalities
Distribution of number of elections and municipalities.
Elections Cities
4 38
5 66
6 11
7 1

The Data

Descriptive statistics for key numeric variables.
N Mean SD missings
Margin 463 30.53 36.22 92.00
n_candidates 542 4.63 4.55 13.00
Turnout 517 36.58 8.80 38.00

The Data

Correlation of dependent variables

Correlation of dependent variables

The Results

The Results

Two-Way Fixed Effects Model

Two-Way Fixed Effects Model

Two-Way Fixed Effects Model

Future Paths

  1. Could local news decline be linked to increased role of national level campaign features in vote choice (e.g. leader impressions)
  2. Evaluate link with .
  3. Utilize continuous nature of newspaper closures.
  4. Evaluate link with status as news desserts (i.e. communities without newspapers).

Concluding questions

  1. How surprised are people at a null finding?
  2. What is the normative significance of a null effect in the current climate in Canada?
  3. What is the theoretical significance of a true null effect from this case.?

References

Breux, Sandra, Jérôme Couture, and Royce Koop. 2017. “Turnout in Local Elections: Evidence from Canadian Cities, 2004–2014.” Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue Canadienne de Science Politique 50 (3): 699–722. https://doi.org/10.1017/S000842391700018X.